Oh no! I can't sing!

[Lester RParticipant]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been writing songs, and recording them at home. I feel comfortable playing all the instruments, except for one... the best one of all. Voice. I can't sing. Oh I wish I could sing ?

 

If you're a songwriter who can't sing, that changes everything.

 

Any other instrument, I could call in a session musician to play. Pay them a fee. Done. But a singer? The singer becomes the face of the song. In fact, the song becomes the singer's song.

 

So my first problem is to find a singer. The second problem is... what do I pay them? I'm an amateur, so I can't pay them megabucks. But what is it worth for them to be the pallbearer of my song? The face of my song. Then I guess it also needs to involve legals and contracts. If I post it on Spotify or YouTube, I guess the song would need to be under the singer's name.

 

It's so complex. Instead of just writing songs, I assume I have to become a producer of someone else. But there must be other songwriters in this situation.

[Samuel GilbertParticipant]

This isn't an answer to your question, but if you feel like you would like to improve your voice, I highly recommend watching Chris Liepe on youtube. He has helped me a ton over the past few months when it came to my voice.

[Lester RParticipant]

I'll check out Chris Liepe's YouTube channel, thanks. But I kind of think my voice is beyond repair.

 

But hiring in an unknown singer from somewhere also seems too hard.

[Andrew Gordon-BrooksParticipant]

Hey Lester,

Just wanted to share that a year ago my voice was the same, it was the one instrument I'd never learned and just sounded like marbles. I really wanting to start writing songs but it was holding me back. I found a few singers to work with but in my experience it just slowed the process down. YouTube videos seemed to work for lots of people but I just couldn't turn the advice into improvement so last year I took the plunge and hired a local vocal coach. I'm investing 1 hour every two weeks and its really helping demystify the process. For me singing is hard and though I would never call myself good, I know I'm improving and am really enjoying the process.

Short answer for me: start singing. Find people to help and invest in it like you would any instrument. Learning to sing is the hardest, scariest, most rewarding journey I've been on for long time

Hope this helps, good luck!

[Author]

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